The next The Elder Scrolls Online addon Elsweyr has been announced. New quests, dragons, a large game area, and a new class are coming. That’s all great, yet MeinMMO author Andreas Bertits poses an important question.
With Elsweyr, the MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online is getting closer to the single-player series. But how does the online game look to the future when The Elder Scrolls 6 has already been announced?
The Dilemma of the Dragons
This is why the dragons reveal a problem in ESO: A statement from our interview with Creative Director Rich Lambert made me particularly puzzled: The dragons are massive boss enemies that can be defeated alone (with the help of NPCs) during the storyline. This once again proves to me that ESO largely targets single-player fans of The Elder Scrolls series.
Let’s be honest: The Elder Scrolls Online can be played perfectly alone. Throughout the storyline, I never felt the need for other players. Sure, some content is harder to master alone, while others present fewer problems. However, it is generally possible to complete the story solo. That’s precisely how it’s intended.
Time and again, the developers point out the solo content to make the game appealing to those who would like to play a new single-player RPG in the series but aren’t necessarily interested in a classic MMORPG. The target audience of Elder Scrolls fans is important to Zenimax. Hence, the note that the dragons can be defeated alone in the Elsweyr storyline.
Will ESO become the next Skyrim with Elsweyr? The Elder Scrolls Online is therefore increasingly resembling Skyrim, or rather the single-player series. This is palpable in so many areas, especially after the announcement of Elsweyr. The dragons now also make the MMORPG appealing to Skyrim fans, who already faced the wyrms in The Elder Scrolls 5. Of course, there are still group content and shared adventures to experience, which are very fun. However, they are not essential for the story experience.
Last year during the E3 games fair, The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced. With this, Bethesda aims to develop the next installment of the single-player series. Sure, the game is still years away from release, and there is no start date yet. Nonetheless, a potential problem could arise for ESO. Fans have been waiting a long time for a successor to Skyrim, despite ESO and its many single-player content. This means that once TES 6 is released, it can be expected that fans will flock to this game.
For me, it was palpable during the announcement of Elsweyr how much The Elder Scrolls Online is now targeting single-player fans and Skyrim players. And that raises the question: “How does this fit together: Bethesda announces TES 6, and just a few months later, there is a presentation for ESO of a new addon that essentially targets the same audience?”
Are Difficult Times Ahead for the MMORPG?
Is TES 6 digging ESO players out? ESO, therefore, speaks to a significant part of the fans waiting for TES 6 with all its single-player content. The fans who will most likely turn their backs on ESO once the sixth installment of the RPG series is released. This could result in a significant loss of players for ESO.
There is often talk of cannibalization when an MMO developer releases multiple online games in the same genre. ESO and TES 6 seem to be similar in this regard. Because ESO is already, to some extent, a kind of single-player game. With TES 6, Bethesda is likely to siphon off a considerable portion of these players.
Now, one might say: TES 6 will probably be a purely single-player title. In this type of game, you consume the content and then move on to the next game – or in the case of TES 6, back to The Elder Scrolls Online. However, Skyrim shows how durable a single-player RPG can be. Especially the mod community has kept the title alive even today, over seven years after the release. Steamcharts shows how strong TES 5 still is today.
And fans also expect good mod support from The Elder Scrolls 6. Therefore, it should be taken into account that TES 6 might bind players longer than many other single-player RPGs.
